r mother, how her grandmother, how all the
strong and quiet women of her race would have borne themselves in a
crisis like this--the implications and evasions which would have walled
them within the garden that was their world. Her mother, she realized,
would have been as incapable of facing the situation as she would have
been of creating it.

"Yes, he cares for me," she answered frankly; and then, before the
terror that leaped into the eyes of the other woman, as if she longed to
turn and run out of the house, Corinna touched her gently on the
shoulder. "Don't look like that!" It was unendurable to her
compassionate heart that she should have brought that look into the eyes
of any living creature.

She led Alice back to the chairs they had left; and when the servant
came in to turn on the softly shaded lamps, they sat there, facing each
other, in a silence which seemed to Corinna to be louder than any sound.
There was the noise of wonder in it, and tragedy, and something vaguely
menacing to which she could not give a name. It was fear, and yet it was
not fear because it was so much worse. Only the blank terror in Alice's
face, the terror of the woman who has lost hope, could express what it
meant. And this terror translated into sound asked presently:

"Are--are you sure?"

A wave of pity surged through Corinna's heart. Her strength became to
her something on which she could rest--which would not fail her; and
she understood why she had had to meet so many disappointments in life,
why she had had to bear so much that was almost unbearable. It was
because, however strong emotion was in her nature, there was always
something deep down in her that was stronger than any emotion. She had
been ruled not by passion but by law, by some clear moral discernment of
things as they ought to be; and this was why weak persons, or those who
were the prey to their own natures, leaned on her with all their weight.
In that instant of self-realization she knew that the refuge of the weak
would be for ever denied her, that she should always be alone because
she was strong enough to rely on her own spirit.

"Before I answer your question," she said, "I must know if you have the
right to ask it."

The wistful eyes grew bright again. How graceful she was, thought
Corinna as she watched her; and she knew that this woman, with her
clinging sweetness, like the sweetness of honeysuckle, and her shallow
violence of mood, could win the kind